Alice Cooper, Reminiscing About the Early '70s

Lennon, Nilsson, and Cooper, with an unidentified forehead

Circa 1979, Billion Dollar Babies was Feral Boy's favorite album. Alice Cooper (née Vincent Furnier - a son of Detroit) sang songs that I could understand (in both senses of the word) - they were clearly enunciated, and offered coherent story-telling, with tangible imagery my adolescent brain could embrace. (Mush-mouthed Bob Dylan? Hippy-dippy Neil Young? "No, thank you," my 16-year-old self would reply. "I'll take the Alice Cooper combo, please, with a side of the Steve Miller Band.") And Glen Buxton's lead guitar on those songs still blows me away, rivaling Mick Ronson's work with David Bowie for the most tasteful noodling to emerge from that period.




So, you'll understand why I was so pleased to stumble upon a piece at vice.com, wherein Alice Cooper waxes nostalgic about that era. Even if you don't care for his brand of shock-rock, you may enjoy his gossip about other rock luminaries. Here are some choice quotes from an otherwise incoherent article:

When we put the Hollywood Vampires together, it was sort of a tribute to the old Hollywood drinking clubs, like when John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, and W.C. Fields would drink every night... We would go up to the top of the Rainbow... Every night it was Harry Nilsson, Bernie Taupin, Micky Dolenz, myself, and whoever else would show up. Ringo was there once in awhile. Keith Moon came when he was in town.

John Lennon would come too. He and Harry Nilsson were the best of friends, ya know? So if Harry was in town, he was always with John, and they’d come over...

But the really fun thing to do was to see what Keith Moon was gonna wear that night. One night he’d be in an Adolf Hitler outfit and the next he’d be the Queen of England... Keith was everybody’s best friend. When he was in town, he would stay at my house for a week, then go to Harry Nilsson’s for a week, and then stay at Ringo’s for a week. There was nobody like him. I always tell people, 30% of what you’ve heard about me is true, 30% of what you hear about Iggy is true, 30% of Prince is true, whatever… but everything you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true...

I got to meet Jim [Morrison] way back when we first moved to Los Angeles. The first people I ran into were Robby Krieger and the other guys from the Doors. They invited my band to come down to Sunset Sound and watch them record, which was great for a bunch of nobodies from Arizona. We were just out of our first year of college, so we had to be 19 or 20 years old when we came to LA. We were the biggest band in Phoenix, but we didn’t realize was there were 15,000 other bands in LA from Utah, Oregon, everywhere. They were the best bands from their cities too, and we were all trying to get gigs in the same clubs. There were maybe twenty clubs to play in and 20,000 bands—so the Doors took us under their wing. Those guys became our best friends, ya know?

Jim was just as self-destructive as you can imagine. He would go to a party—and in those days at a party, instead of jellybeans there'd be bowls of pills—and take a handful of pills and wash it down with Jack Daniel's. And who knew what those pills were?

...the version you hear of "The End" was the version they took from the session I watched them record. There were 26 other versions of the song, with different story lines, and every time they did it, Jim changed it. He never did it the same way twice... I mean, when Jim did "When the Music’s Over" and all those other songs—he was just improvising as he went. Which was pretty amazing, cause you were only gonna hear them once that way. The Doors were very jazz-oriented, so they played off each other well.

...you know the line in "Roadhouse Blues" that goes, “I woke up this morning, got myself a beer?” That’s my line. I was sitting there talking to him and Jim says, “What did you do today?” I said, “I woke up this morning, got myself a beer, duh, duh, duh…” Next thing I know, I hear it in that song.

...[the] harmonica on “Roadhouse Blues”... was John Sebastian, he just didn’t want his name on a Doors album because of the thing with Jim Morrison in Miami where he allegedly pulled his pants down and exposed himself. It wasn’t good for the Lovin’ Spoonful’s image to be attached to a Doors record.

...on “Under My Wheels,” it’s Rick Derringer playing lead guitar, not Glen Buxton.

We had a session one night in Morgan Studios in London when we were doing "Billion Dollar Babies." So Harry Nilsson walks in, and he’s got Marc Bolan, Ringo, Keith Moon, and Ric Grech from Blind Faith with him... To this day, I can't remember who played what on what. I know that Marc Bolan plays  somewhere on that album. Harry plays something on the album. Keith is on the album. Ringo’s on the album. It was one of those nights that’s just a blackout.

So Donovan was in the next studio recording with Mickey Most. He had a bunch of kids in there, ya know, that were singing on something. I can’t remember what song it was, but I came in and said, “I need a guy with a real British accent to do a voice over. Donovan, it’s time that you did some real rock ‘n’ roll.” So Donovan says, “Come into my studio, I’ve got all these kids that I’m conducting for this one vocal part.” I said, “I’ll conduct ‘em for ya!”       

He said OK. I had the make-up on and everything and the kids were terrified, but we got it all done and it was great. So then I pulled Donovan into my studio, and he just nailed the duet on “Billion Dollar Babies.” He just killed it.